A Deadly Banishment
by imitateslife
Summary: Erik tells his love story to the only person left alive to hear it, but it is not the love story one might expect. Kay-based. Erik/Luciana.
You look surprised, Daroga, when I say that I have loved and lost. And why shouldn't you be surprised? You know me as well as – better than! – any other man upon this earth. And never once have I mentioned a wife, a lover, a mistress. She was none of those things, Daroga, but she was my first love. At times I think I might have been hers, too, but, of course I flatter myself…! We were but children you see.

Now, I know what you're thinking: what can two children possibly know of love? And I'll tell you: we knew nothing. That was why it was so painful to love her. I thought I might be dying when we met. In truth, I died a little every time she spoke my name with that pretty, little mouth of hers. She spoke of me with such tender disgust, you know. You don't reserve such disdain for just anybody! Oh, no. She did not like me. At times, I daresay she hated me. But I loved her all the same. I loved the way her lips would purse, the way her brow would furrow. I loved her for the tempestuousness of her soul.

She was everything I was not. She was fire; I was ice. She was light; I was darkness. In fact, that was her name… Luciana. It means "of the light" in Italian. And she was made of light. She was heated and reckless and carefree… ignorant – so very ignorant! – but I believed, _truly_ believed, that she had the capacity to learn. To grow. To thrive. There was so much I kept in the shadows and longed to bring to her light, but I didn't have the words or the grace to share my world with her. I feared smothering her, feared contaminating her, you see. She was everything I was not… She was beautiful and I was a freak.

There was a garden on her father's rooftop where we passed many days. She demanded I make her a bench; I would have built her a palace, if she but asked. And she was demanding. Greedy. I learned from her more than she ever learned from me. I learned that confidence – you might call it arrogance – produces results faster than humility. They say the meek shall inherit, but the meek only inherit whatever it is that the vocal do not lay claim to first. Yes, I learned much from Luciana, even if I could not impart to her the music, the science, the architecture I so desperately wished I could share with her. In that garden, watching as she tended her red poppies – and tending to those delicate blooms myself when she could not be bothered – I learned not only love, but patience, arrogance, desire. Yes, even as a teenager, I could learn about that most wretched of emotions! I did not want her carnally, though I suppose it would have one day blossomed as blood red as her poppies in my soul. But, by God, Daroga! I wanted Luciana. I craved her approval, her affection, her kiss…! All things I learned I could never have. Certainly, I shall never have them now.

She died, you see. My Luciana. She… She fell. From that most perfect of gardens we had created. She wanted to see the face beneath the mask. I hadn't the willpower to deny her anything. And when the mask came off… Oh, Daroga, I shall never forget those screams! They haunt me still. I hear them in my head, those abject, terrified screams. The roar of crumbling stone. The crack and thud of her body hitting the ground below. I hear it all, still… Even after all these years. Just when I think I've forgotten, I hear her screaming in the night. And then, the deafening silence of death.

Sometimes I think of her as my first murder victim. She wasn't, of course. I had killed before then. But it is only for her which I feel remorse. She was about to bloom, about to grow into something breathtaking. And I plucked her before her time. I did not stay for the funeral; I did not even stay to see her broken body on the cobbled pavement below. I couldn't. I had loved her father – to this day, I still do – but I had taken from him his most precious flower and crushed her. A man can only forgive so much. You understand. Surely you must. You are a father. Would you ever forgive the man who robbed you of your life's joy? I could not bear his anguish, his resentment. I left before he could turn me away; I left and never looked back. From Italy, I traveled to the Punjab. From the Punjab to Hanoi. Hanoi to Russia. And finally I have come here, to this godforsaken land. And in all my travels, I have seen beautiful women. They mock me. They are mere shadows of what Luciana would have been if she had lived. She would have blinded men with her beauty. She would have been radiant. And, if she had never seen my face, perhaps she would have loved me.

But she saw my face and now she is dead. No woman has been able to look upon me in love. None ever shall. She was my one hope in this world. There will never be another. Not in Persia, not in Rome; I could scour the world and never find a love like the love I have for her. A hundred years could pass and nothing would compare.

Tell me, Nadir. You had a wife. You loved her very much; you lost her. Was she your first love? Your only love? You will never marry again, just as I shall never marry even once. It is not martyrdom; it is love. It is what one does when they have met their soulmate. If there are such things as souls, then mine and Luciana's were made to find one another. We were made to war with each other, made to push one another, made to love one another. But things ended before their time and now I love her all alone.

It's fitting that you have given me opium to ease the nightmares. The taste of poppy that lingers in the smoke… It reminds me of her. It brings me sweet dreams, where she is my living bride and not the dead girl I once loved so viciously. I once heard her tell her father that she would not let me be ugly… In these dreams, she truly has the power to make a man of the beast that I am. Such pretty dreams these are… But when morning comes and I am alone, I remember that I am nothing more than a monster. Not just my face… my soul as grown monstrous. It has absorbed her spirit, you see, and taken the best and worst of us to make a new man. An ugly man, a prideful man. A spiteful genius, an incurable perfectionist. I work every day to create something beautiful. I want to honor the man I would have called father, if given time to love Luciana as she ought to have been loved. He taught me everything – _everything!_ He taught me architecture. He taught me how to be a man. He was the father I ought to have had and in another life, I would have been able to call him such. I would have had his daughter as my living wife and together, we would have created beauty. Beautiful art, beautiful gardens, perhaps even beautiful children! But all that is _gone_. I am a creature of darkness. Any light that I possess, I extinguish. The woman I love never lived. I never gave her that chance.

* * *

A/N:

The title is taken from Valentine's monologue in William Shakespeare's "Two Gentlemen of Verona".

"To die, is to be banish'd from myself;  
And Silvia is myself: banish'd from her,  
Is self from self: a deadly banishment!  
What light is light, if Silvia be not seen?  
What joy is joy, if Silvia be not by?  
Unless it be to think that she is by,  
And feed upon the shadow of perfection.  
Except I be by Silvia in the night,  
There is no music in the nightingale;  
Unless I look on Silvia in the day,  
There is no day for me to look upon;  
She is my essence, and I leave to be,  
If I be not by her fair influence  
Foster'd, illumin'd, cherish'd, kept alive."


End file.
